Park City Rotary this week honored a pair of citizens for their longtime service to the community. Colin Hilton, president and CEO of the Olympic Legacy Foundation, was the recipient of the Linda Singer-Berrett Professional Citizen of the Year award and Glenn Artist was named the Jack Green Volunteer Citizen of the Year.

The awards ceremony took place Tuesday during a lunch at Grub Steak Restaurant.

Bob Richer, chair of Park City Rotary’s Citizen of the Year committee, noted that the awards are for the year 2014, even though the ceremony was held later in the year than usual.

Colin Hilton

Myles Rademan nominated Hilton for the Professional Citizen of the Year award. Rademan said he’s known Hilton since they worked on the Olympics together starting in 1999.

After the Olympics, Hilton worked for Park City Municipal Corp. for four years as its economic development director before Rademan and others sold him on the job of taking over the Olympic Legacy Foundation, where he’s been ever since.

Rademan lauded Hilton’s success during the Olympics and his work for the city, including developing the sports fields and ice rink facility at Quinn’s Junction as well as downtown improvements.

“I had a lot of fun,” Hilton said of his time working for the City.

“He’s a real do-er,” Rademan said. “Sometimes we get bogged down in too much talk, too many consultants, a few too many public meetings. Sometimes you want to get something done — you want to see kids playing out on a field or ice skating, or traffic working. He’s great at that stuff.”

Luke Bodensteiner, USSA Executive Vice President, Athletics, and chair of the Olympic Legacy Foundation’s board of directors, lauded Hilton’s work for the Legacy Foundation.

“When we recruited him to become the CEO of that organization, he made it really clear to us that he wasn’t interested in an Olympic legacy that was about keeping venues open and hosting the occasional event. For him, his vision of a legacy was how to really engage a community, how to get a lot of kids involved from a personal-developmental standpoint,” he said. “That’s what really turned us on to put him in charge of the operation. And he’s certainly done that.”

“And at the end of the day, the Olympic legacy is something that touches everybody in this community every day. Our families, it shapes how we view ourselves as a community, how the rest of the world views Park City,” he said. “Utah’s got arguably the best Olympic legacy worldwide and [Hilton] really continued to position this community as a logical place to someday look at bringing the Olympics back here.”

Hilton agrees that his focus is on making the best use of the Olympic facilities.

“I had always felt like there should be greater emphasis on finding unique, creative ways to use these facilities after a major event, and I think we’re setting a pretty good standard at the moment,” he said. “With what we’re doing, being four times busier from where we were just after 2002, and the amount of support that the community has given, I am very rewarded in what is going on and it’s a terrific community to do this.”

Glenn Artist

Glenn Artist, Rotary’s Volunteer Citizen of the Year, was nominated for the award by John Hanrahan, a founder of both the People’s Health Clinic and the Hope Alliance.

“I just think [Artist] epitomizes the spirit of volunteerism in our community. He has done lots of volunteer work for many, many years in a lot of different organizations and has just been outstanding,” he said.

“We’ve worked together on the [Hope Alliance] board for seven years now and been on humanitarian expeditions overseas a couple of times, and he just puts everyone at ease and works hard and just makes things go smoothly,” he added.

“We’ve always been able to count on Glenn at Hope Alliance,” Ken Barfield agreed.

“Glenn embodies service above self,” said Jenny Smith, former president and general manager of Park City Mountain Resort, on Tuesday.

Amy Roberts, public relations director at Park City Medical Center, where Artist has volunteered for around six years, said Artist’s most common refrain is “I can do that for you,” and, after the task is done, “What’s next?”

35 years and counting

The two Citizen of the Year plaques hang in the Park City Room of the library.

“In my mind,” said Richer, “that’s kind of a who’s-who of the last 35 years of Park City history, the people who helped make the town into what it is today. I always put the disclaimer that we exclude the Park City Rotary members — they’re not eligible for the honor.”

Richer listed some former Professional Citizens of the Year.

“Nick Badami, Stein Eriksen, Bob Wheaton, people like that. It’s a prestigious group to be a part of,” he said.

Dean Berrett spoke Tuesday about the two awards’ namesakes — Jack Green, Park City’s mayor from 1978 to 1986, and Linda Singer-Berrett, the first principal at Parley’s Park Elementary and McPolin Elementary School, as well as the first female Rotary member and then president.

“As for the future, there are members of this club, in this community, who will be the future Jack Greens and Linda Singers, who believe that by serving others much more than themselves, they can make a positive difference,” he said.